It did not take very long into Wings Week for someone in the slag cave to posit the question to the other members of the shift, "What kind of wings are best?" and offered the choices as boneless, flats, and drums. Disappointingly but not surprisingly, the fourth and best choice, "none," was not listed.
"But everybody who isn't a communist loves wings," we hear you shriek in your familiar hectoring tone. Here, though, as is true with most of your other hysterical blurtings, you are wrong.
To start, "none" should be a choice in every multiple-choice question because everyone including thoughtful nihilists should be heard, even on hen-adjacent matters. Next, there is no link between wings and communism other than the directional and rhetorical one. And third, unanimity on any subject is by its very nature suspicious. This is not Turkmenistan, no matter what the outward signs may suggest.
Mostly, though, the great flaw with chicken wings is that they are chicken, to wit. In fact, they are worse than chicken because unlike chicken, which can be served as a contiguous hunk of protein, wings are eaten by the dozens and their remains are tossed in a congealing heap onto a communal vat of other people's wings until the eating area looks like the floor of a World War I hospital tent. Wings are what you get when your friends decide you're not worth real food, and what they get when you decide that they aren't either. They are the health compromise people who ate pizza the last three nights make on Day 4.
Even the commercials for the two most popular wing joints are telling you this is all true. One has a giant buffalo with no apparent motor control as its spokesman, knocking people through storefront windows through nothing more than semi-comedic clumsiness and passing it off as a fun night out: "Hey, did you want glass shards with that order of lemon pepper?" The other can't even get the order of its name right: Wing Stop is clearly listed in reverse order.
Also, we have found through observational as well as anecdotal evidence that most folks are in this for the sauces rather than the meat thing beneath them. That ought to tell you something—specifically that if you try just to order the sauces without the wings, there's an excellent chance you will detect the flaw in the more traditional delivery mechanism. Hell, put your favorite sauce in a shot of Fernet Branca and tell us it doesn't drastically improve the taste. It's objectively better than a shot of fernet with a wing dropped in it.
Ultimately, this cannot be about us, though. We've tried to warn you off other things that are bad for you without success, like your boyfriend or the Washington Wizards. If you like wings, sweet and dandy for you. Eat them to your arteries' content until the sauces and grease merge on your face into a representation of the cover of Jackson Pollock's first cookbook. Ordering wings is not necessarily a cry for help as much as a cry to help yourselves, and we only judge from afar, never in person. Besides, most places you can get wings also provide beer.
Just know that in the end, you could live out your life, pass on to the next plane of existence, and find out that there could be a universe that collects the humans for the next stage of existence, and all its gods, goddesses, and other celestial beings are chickens: vengeful, hungry, wingless chickens who greet you with a beaky sneer, and cluck to each other, "Hey, Clemson–South Carolina's on in half an hour. Let's get some mead and seed, and cook up some arms before kickoff. Go Gamecocks!"
